| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 322 pages) |
| Contents |
1. Mass communication -- 2. Indissolubility -- 3. Bigamy -- 4. Consummation |
| Summary |
This study shows how marriage symbolism emerged from the world of texts to become a social force affecting ordinary people. The book covers the whole medieval period but identifies the decades around 1200 as decisive. New arguments for regarding preaching as a real mass medium in the period c.1200 onwards are presented, building on the author's Medieval Marriage Sermons (Oxford, 2001). In marriage sermons symbolism was crucial, but it also became a social force through law, and lay behind the combination of monogamy with indissolubility, which made the medieval Church's marriage system a unique development in world history. Symbolism is not presented as an explanation on its own: it interacted with other causal factors, notably the 11th-cenury Gregorian Reform's drive for celibacy, which made the higher clergy into a sort of 'third gender' and less sympathetic to patriarchal polygamous tendencies. Sexual intercourse as a symbol of Christ's union with the Church became central not just in mysticism but in society as structured by Canon Law. Marriage symbolism also explains some apparently bizarre rules such as the exemption from capital punishment of clerics in Minor Orders even if they were married -- provided that they married a virgin not a widow, and that they did not remarry if their wife died. The rules about blessing second marriages are also connected with this nexus of thought. The book is based on a wide range of manuscript sources: sermons, canon law commentaries, Registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary, papal bulls, a Gaol Delivery roll, and pastoral handbooks. Publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 288-309) and indexes |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from HTML title page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed May 14, 2021) |
| Subject |
Marriage customs and rites, Medieval.
|
|
Marriage customs and rites -- Europe -- History -- To 1500
|
|
15.70 history of Europe.
|
|
REFERENCE -- Weddings.
|
|
Marriage customs and rites
|
|
Marriage customs and rites, Medieval
|
|
Huwelijk.
|
|
Symboliek.
|
|
Huwelijksgebruiken.
|
|
Europe
|
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
|
|
History
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
1423753054 |
|
9781423753056 |
|
9780191716690 |
|
0191716693 |
|
0198208219 |
|
9780198208211 |
|
